Love in War
by amyborn
Summary: Hermione, injured and weak, finds herself much too close to an unknown Death Eater in the midst of the final battle. Re-write.


**A/N- After four years, I am finally re-working this one-shot. It probably still won't make it to the long fic I had originally planned for it to be, as I'm working on so many at the moment, but it will definitely be much longer than it was before. If you find yourself reading this, I hope you find it worth your time. I would appreciate helpful comments, if you have any. Here is the first chapter.**

* * *

She fumbled for the gold chain around her blooded neck, her trembling fingers desperate to get a grip on the small, gold lion charm that hung from it. It was a gift from her mother and father, what felt like a hundred years ago, when she had first learned of this world. She would often hold on to it in at times like this, when her heart was aching, to remember the comfort of their presence. She held back her tears, more so to save her energy than to spare herself the heartache, and propped herself against the hard, stone wall. She leant her head back and waited for her breathing to steady, finally having a moment to calm down.

She was back, again, in the small confines of the hut she had found in her third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry; the one that had guarded her from the schoolyard taunts that would emotionally wound her. Only, this time, the hut was not so safe and she was not so naïve as to be hiding from schoolyard taunts. This time, she was more physically and emotionally wounded than she had ever been. This time, she was hoping, more desperately than she had ever hoped before, to find that same solace again in this hut. Solace, and escape, from the horrors of the malicious war that was raging just beyond the walls of her hut.

A fresh wave of pain and panic hit her with each cry that reached through the walls and echoed through the dark, stone space around her. She let her eyes close – just for a fleeting moment – against their own weight. As the adrenalin slowly ebbed from her body, her senses began to return. There was a searing pain in her thigh; begging for her attention. _Dolohov_, she thought, scowling as she remembered the sucker-curse he had thrown at her. She squinted through the blackness to reach for her wand inside of her jacket.

She pushed her back harder against the stone wall to adjust her posture. She held out her wand and used what had to have been the last of her energy to generate a miserable amount of light, through which she assessed the damage to her thigh. She pressed her lips together to subdue her urge to retch; the denim of her pants had been burnt away to sport a glistening mound of fresh, butchered flesh. Hot tears of panic burnt their way down her dirty cheeks. _Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck_. She breathed quickly as she tried to regain her composure. _Calm down, calm down…for Merlin's sake, calm down_. She took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse and tried to recall some healing spells. Despite her intelligence, her exhausted mind produced nothing but the basic 'Episkey'. She raised her trembling arm and held her wand above her bare flesh.

"Epi…episkey," she breathed, struggling to find her voice within her sore throat. She let out a hoarse, tired cry of agony as her flesh tried desperately to gather back into itself. She knew the spell would not be strong enough for the severity of her wound, but prayed that it would at least speed her up body's natural recovery.

She whimpered against her own exhaustion. She dropped her arm beside her and willed her eyes open, but it had been so long since she had felt the sweet relief of sleep. She had not slept since the Death Eaters had broken through the walls of Hogwarts two nights ago. Or was it three? She couldn't remember. She had lost all of her focus when she was separated from her two closest friends.

She had lost sight of both Harry and Ron after what felt like two minutes. It was all a blur. The attack had caught them so off guard that she was sure they had looked like ten or so chickens without heads, scattering around and shouting at each other. With no plan whatsoever, they were each left to their own instincts as the Death Eaters flooded into the room. She shuddered at the memory. She had caught Ron's eyes, filled with horror, as she fled the room, stalked by a Death Eater. She could almost hear Ron's voice as he called after her. The memory was haunting her. Where was he? Where was Harry? Where was anybody? She could not function without knowing they were safe. She was not herself without them. Had they been separated from each other, too? Were they captured? Fighting? Hiding? Together? Alive? This was not how it was meant to be; they were meant to fight together. They were prepared to fight together. The shock had rendered her useless.

Her fears ran endlessly through her mind until her exhaustion took over her body, wrapping her into her subconscious.

* * *

Her eyes snapped open against the gentle sunlight that was creeping through the cracks of the hut and resting on her dirty face. The serenity of the peaceful, slowing sun did not last long, as the cries of the victims just a few hundred feet away slowly began reached her ears. She whipped her head up, away from the streams of sunlight. The haziness from the sunshine inside the hut told her that it was either dawn or dusk. She gripped her wand tightly in her hand and wiped the sleep from her eyes with her dirty sleeve. The nerve endings in her entire body seemed more alive than ever as her eyes frantically scanned the hut for signs of an intruder.

The two armchairs that had furnished the small room on her previous visits had been reduced to a pile of splinters. The blanket of dust that lay over them, however, assured her that this most likely hadn't happen recently. The window opposite her had, fortunately for her, been boarded with what seemed to be the remains of one of the armchairs. The fireplace, which had once been connected to the floo network, was also boarded. The only part of the hut that seemed to be untouched was the circular rug that spanned the small space, and the entrance to the tunnel that led to an old willow tree just outside of Hogsmeade, that was peeking out from behind a large, damaged bookshelf.

Once she was convinced that she had not been seen and was, undoubtedly, alone, she assessed her current condition. Her body was bruised and stiff; she felt possibly worse than she had before she had fallen asleep. Her brain was pounding against her skull for sleep, or for water, or probably for both. The vertebrae in her spine cracked down to her hips as she tried to stretch her damaged muscles. Her face was covered in filth, sweat, and minor abrasions. She stretched her arms and deemed that they were in good enough condition. She did not pull up her sleeves to assess them; she already knew what would be staring back up at her. She did not need, nor want, to see the ugly scar that had been wretched into her forearm by Bellatrix Lestrange, two months ago, made even uglier by the torture that it would bring back to her mind. Her leg was no longer burning with agony, and was now cold. Her brow furrowed. She wiped her hair from her grimy face and peered, anxiously, down at her thigh. Her head spun as she saw that her jeans were drenched with her own, dried blood. She leant in closer, noticing that the wound, although still fresh and open, was also considerably dry. She felt a pang of frustration as she knew that she couldn't leave the hut in this condition—that is, if she could even walk, at all. It did not sit well with her to have to sit here, useless, while a war raged on outside.

She took a deep breath, as if oxygen was her energy source, and pointedly tried to ignore another deafening blow, from what must have been an explosion, from beyond the walls of her hut.

"Tergeo," she winced as most of the dried blood cleared from the wound. She repeated the incantation, this time watching random patches of her dried blood fade from her pants. She rolled her eyes in frustration and ignored the fear that was rising in her chest; her magic was faltering. She had read about this in her Magical Theory classes. It was a basic rule of thumb that the health of a witch or wizard's magic was directly correlated to the condition of their medical health. She held her lion charm, again, as her heart raced. She moved her leg, slowly, to find that she could now move it with minimal pain. A little more rest and she would attempt to stand.

The cool sunlight faded to a burnt orange. _So its dusk, then_, she thought. Her eyes frantically searched the hut for any signs of food or water before she lost the light all together. There was a vase on the top shelf of the bookshelf that hid the tunnel to Hogsmeade. She attempted to summon the vase to her side, to check for water, but it merely fell off of the shelf and onto the rug with a heavy thud. _Well, at least there was no water in it_, she thought, bitterly, noticing that nothing had poured out of it. There was nothing else in the room that could offer her any form of nourishment. Had she not been completely dehydrated, her eyes would have welled up with the anger and frustration that was boiling inside of her.

She clutched her wand, praying that it would still come in useful, as the burnt orange sunlight faded to black.

It could not have been more than a second later that her eyes snapped open to the blackness, her body rigid with fear, to the most horrifying sound that she could have imagined in her current situation—a voice that wasn't her own.


End file.
